Dad killed hours after daughter sits SEA exam

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

On the day he was cel­e­brat­ing his daugh­ter writ­ing the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion, 45-year-old Ra­jku­mar Pope was killed in what rel­a­tives de­scribed as a sense­less and un­pro­voked at­tack.

Po­lice con­firmed yes­ter­day that a 17-year-old sus­pect who lives in the same com­mu­ni­ty as Pope has been de­tained in con­nec­tion with the killing.

The sus­pect is a rel­a­tive of 13-year-old Mari­ah Seenath, who was mur­dered last Sep­tem­ber.

As Pope’s wife, An­nie, tried to make sense of the in­ci­dent at their Friend­ship Vil­lage home yes­ter­day, she said they were all in good spir­its on Thurs­day, as their 11-year-old daugh­ter sat the SEA ex­am. She, her hus­band, their 17-year-old son and her sis­ter picked up their daugh­ter af­ter the ex­am. Even­tu­al­ly, her hus­band dropped them off at Gulf City Mall, San Fer­nan­do, and he re­turned home to feed their dogs and work in the yard.

Lat­er on, he picked them up and on their way home, he stopped around 6.30 pm at a mi­ni mart in St John’s Vil­lage, which is a short dis­tance away from their home, to buy bread for An­nie’s moth­er.

Pope said she saw the sus­pect, whom she recog­nised from a video that was cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia last week, look­ing at their car through the glass door of the busi­ness place. She said nei­ther she nor her hus­band ever had any pri­or in­ter­ac­tions with him. She said they felt un­com­fort­able, and her hus­band sug­gest­ed that they go else­where, but then changed his mind.

As her hus­band en­tered the busi­ness place, Pope said the sus­pect sud­den­ly at­tacked her hus­band, chok­ing his neck and punch­ing him. She re­called that her hus­band de­fend­ed him­self and they be­gan fight­ing. She said the sus­pect’s fa­ther was in the store hold­ing a young child. She came out of the car and, to­geth­er with the sus­pect’s fa­ther, sep­a­rat­ed them.

Her hus­band’s eyes were se­vere­ly swollen af­ter the in­ci­dent.

When they got home, he went on the bed and com­plained about pains to his head. They even­tu­al­ly called the am­bu­lance, but his con­di­tion took a turn for the worse. Blood be­gan flow­ing from his mouth and nose, and he slipped in­to un­con­scious­ness. He died just af­ter 9 pm while be­ing at­tend­ed to at the Princes Town health fa­cil­i­ty.

Lament­ing that Thurs­day was sup­posed to have been a joy­ous oc­ca­sion, Pope said she still doesn’t un­der­stand what hap­pened.

“He was such a won­der­ful per­son. All his work­ers, every­body call­ing my phone, they just can’t be­lieve this.”

Pope said her hus­band worked at the En­gi­neer­ing de­part­ment at the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and was a de­cent, hard­work­ing and car­ing per­son. They had been mar­ried for al­most 17 years and he was al­so the sole bread­win­ner in the fam­i­ly. One of her hus­band’s main fo­cus­es, she said, was to en­sure his chil­dren got a prop­er ed­u­ca­tion.

“I don’t know why, why this hap­pened,” she lament­ed.

How­ev­er, she be­lieves that it was a ran­dom at­tack.

“I be­lieve he was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said.

A per­son who knows the sus­pect said he has been un­der emo­tion­al stress since Mari­ah’s mur­der.

An au­top­sy is ex­pect­ed to be done next week at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James. Of­fi­cers of the Homi­cide Bu­reau Re­gion 3 are con­tin­u­ing en­quiries.